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My first day with the HP Stream 7 tablet

J

jkauff

Senior member
I took the Microsoft Store bait and went for their $99 offer of an HP Stream 7 with no crapware installed. It arrived yesterday, and I've been playing with it for about a day now.

First the bad news. The microSD slot doesn't work (I'll probably return it for that). It's not even the size of a microSD card. Next up, the screen is highly reflective and already has a thick layer of fingerprints on it. The single speaker is terrible, although headphones sound fine. Finally, worst of all, it's a Windows tablet and all the available apps are in the Microsoft Store.

Now the good news. It's running a full copy of Win 8.1. Using OneDrive, I downloaded and installed Start 8, Total Commander, MPC-HC, and madVR. I also copied a couple of movies.

The Stream will, as its name might imply, stream music and movies from OneDrive without downloading the files. The built-in player apps are pretty good, and you can use Windows Media Player instead if you like. They're not in the class of MPC-HC and madVR, however, so I downloaded the movies to local storage. They look great. I can't find any specs on the screen PPI, but the picture is excellent.

Bottom line so far is that I've got a touch screen device where the Metro UI actually makes some sense (so far I'm using it for weather and FreeCell), and I've got a very portable Win 8.1 machine that runs all my usual Windows software, including a free year of Office 365. For $99.

For a full tablet experience you'll probably want to go iPad or Android, but it's very handy having a fully-functional Windows machine the size of a paperback book. And you can't beat the price.

EDIT: Found the microSD slot. It's actually inside the unit, not accessible from the outside. You have to take the back cover off. Not sure what the "mystery slot" on the outside is.
 
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What symptoms do you have with the microSD slot? I have a Winbook win8.1 tablet with a microSD slot that I thought didn't work because after I inserted my card nothing registered in windows explorer. However, once I rebooted the device the storage showed up.
 
Why install Start 8 on a tablet (especially on a 7" tablet)? Unless you are attaching a keyboard/mouse, seems pointless. Metro works great on a touch interface. If you take the time to actually learn to use it works fine.

Is there a lot of lag? 1GB of RAM scares me.
 
I picked up a Stream 7 from HP.com for $80 shipped. Sold off the year subscription to Office 365 for $40; net $40 for a Windows 8.1 tablet that runs pretty darn fast.

The screen and speakers are average at best, but top of their class for under $100.

Walmart will also have a 8" Windows 8.1 tablet for $100 on BF. Microsoft and Intel are going for a land-grab this holiday season, with dirt cheap tablets, laptops, and convertibles running Windows 8.1 and Atom CPUs.

Given how fast Metro UI runs on barebones PCs, I think people will be generally happy with the performance.
 
quikah said:
Why install Start 8 on a tablet (especially on a 7" tablet)? Unless you are attaching a keyboard/mouse, seems pointless. Metro works great on a touch interface. If you take the time to actually learn to use it works fine.

Is there a lot of lag? 1GB of RAM scares me.
Click to expand...
I want Start8 because I'm going to use the desktop side more than the Metro side. Works fine with touch.

The OS is actually pretty responsive. MS must have really slimmed down this tablet version of 8.1.
 
jkauff said:
I took the Microsoft Store bait and went for their $99 offer of an HP Stream 7 with no crapware installed. It arrived yesterday, and I've been playing with it for about a day now.

First the bad news. The microSD slot doesn't work (I'll probably return it for that). It's not even the size of a microSD card. Next up, the screen is highly reflective and already has a thick layer of fingerprints on it. The single speaker is terrible, although headphones sound fine. Finally, worst of all, it's a Windows tablet and all the available apps are in the Microsoft Store.

Now the good news. It's running a full copy of Win 8.1. Using OneDrive, I downloaded and installed Start 8, Total Commander, MPC-HC, and madVR. I also copied a couple of movies.

The Stream will, as its name might imply, stream music and movies from OneDrive without downloading the files. The built-in player apps are pretty good, and you can use Windows Media Player instead if you like. They're not in the class of MPC-HC and madVR, however, so I downloaded the movies to local storage. They look great. I can't find any specs on the screen PPI, but the picture is excellent.

Bottom line so far is that I've got a touch screen device where the Metro UI actually makes some sense (so far I'm using it for weather and FreeCell), and I've got a very portable Win 8.1 machine that runs all my usual Windows software, including a free year of Office 365. For $99.

For a full tablet experience you'll probably want to go iPad or Android, but it's very handy having a fully-functional Windows machine the size of a paperback book. And you can't beat the price.

EDIT: Found the microSD slot. It's actually inside the unit, not accessible from the outside. You have to take the back cover off. Not sure what the "mystery slot" on the outside is.
Click to expand...

I just got mine today too. The slot on the side is the speaker opening lol. It works well enough for me. I really like it so far however I have two gripes. It seems to only charge with the included wall adapter and nothing else, no portable battery chargers or other cell phone chargers will work, although I've tried several different cables with the wallwart and it will charge. When plugged in to other chargers Windows just says "plugged in but not charging" and the battery still drains. That means no charging unless you have access to an AC outlet. My guess is HP wants you to buy charging accessories from HP and has managed to make it so only their chargers work.

Also when plugging in headphones I hear some slight buzzing/noise in the audio. Do you get that?

I'd say the 5-6 hour battery life is probably accurate.

Its much faster than my win7 AMD dual core laptop with 4gb of ram which is admittedly a budget laptop but still... damned impressive for $89 and something that you can almost fit in your pocket that runs a full blown OS.
 
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jkauff said:
...and I've got a very portable Win 8.1 machine that runs all my usual Windows software, including a free year of Office 365. For $99.
Click to expand...

Is this a regular personal copy of Office 365, meaning in addition to the tablet you can install it on 1 computer and 1 phone?

-KeithP
 
Not being able to charge via standard wires like USB cable is epic fail. Thanks for letting us know.
 
NickelPlate said:
Also when plugging in headphones I hear some slight buzzing/noise in the audio. Do you get that?
Click to expand...
No, no noise at all. Try blowing some compressed air into the connector.

The other cool thing is that I can play FLAC files by installing MPC-HC or better yet, foobar2000. I won't be doing that until my microSD card arrives today, though.
 
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I'm kind of surprised that the next line of Cherry trail tablets haven't come out yet. Intel is dropping the ball compared to Apple m
 
Update on the charging issue. There is a device under batteries called MS AC adapter in device manager. I disabled it and now it charges fine from other sources.
 
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NickelPlate said:
Update on the charging issue. There is a device under batteries called MS AC adapter in device manager. I disabled it and now it charges fine from other sources.
Click to expand...

thanks for the update. 1 last question. where did u buy this HP machine for $99? on amazon, i see the normal price of $130
 
So what's a good micro sd card to get for tablet? Are they pretty much all the same or should I spring for a faster one?
 
I have no use for a tablet. But for $60after selling that office subscription on eBay... I might just bite. Can't believe the screen is ips n not crap
 
I bought mine from OD, and there was no separate license card for Office 365. It appeared to be preloaded and must be activated within six months of the Windows license activation.
 
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